


the taste of you will never leave my lips again

by shae (5H4E)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: John Heathcliff- I mean Heathcliff Murphy- I mean-, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 12:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7977124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5H4E/pseuds/shae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Murphy,” Finn lowers the blade – John watches it as Finn wipes it on his boxers under the water – and laughs in his light-hearted way. “I thought you wanted me to teach you how to shave?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the taste of you will never leave my lips again

**Author's Note:**

> “If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”  
> What can I say? I have a thing for relating John Murphy to justifiably angry men doing unjustifiably terrible things in classic literature.

He thinks, perhaps, he might love Finn Collins, as the other boy presses a blade to his jaw,

John perches on a water-beaten rock, hands resting on the smoothened surface to relieve to his bloodied fingers. Under the dappled streaming sunlight of the morning, with the cold of the water lapping against his skin, and the constant soft thundering of the waterfall, John slackens; he’s safe, he’s safe, he’s _safe_. Finn kneels between his legs, water reaching his naval, as he shaves the peppering of pubescent hairs from John’s jaw.

“And –” Finn’s voice is breathy, and he’s smiling, and not to placate him, and it looks so _easy_ on him, “That’s it.”

And everything _is_ so easy for Finn, and a part of John hates him for that, but out of everyone, John hates Finn the least, and it’s _hard_ to hate him, anyway.

“– _What_?”

“Murphy,” Finn lowers the blade – John watches it as Finn wipes it on his boxers under the water – and laughs in his light-hearted way. “I thought you _wanted_ me to teach you how to shave?”

John shifts, leaning back into the shade slightly. He looks down. He had approached Finn because he felt safer with him than with anyone else at camp. His own father hadn’t been around long enough to teach John to shave, and he’s little more than a shadow around camp. The delinquents spend their time avoiding him. He remembers Clarke and Bellamy’s agreement to kill him, and John’s careful to avoid reminding them of it. His life is forfeit – a cheap, discard-able thing – dependent on Clarke and Bellamy being distracted by other things; Connor’s death, the burned remains of the meat house, the lack of food, the Grounders.

“I did.”

“What were you thinking about?” Finn asks; under the water, John reaches out with aching fingers and takes the blade from Finn. Besides, he thinks, his fingers have been useless since his nails were torn off. His eyes settle on Finn’s scar, deep and ugly against the peach of his abdomen. “Girls?”

Girls are so far removed from John’s thoughts he has to snort; it’s unattractive and sends a pang of ache across his left temple where his eye is still black and swollen, but it’s the first time he’s genuinely laughed in a while. He looks up again, at Finn’s smiling, laughing face, and thinks _fuck, I love him._

“Not quite,” he settles for, and even though it’s true, he feels like he’s lying somehow.

“Ah.”

John has crawled through his own blood and filth to escape the Grounders, has fought off a fever that he barely remembers through shuttered, flashing memories reminding him of his father and the Ark, and if that was supposed to be his penance, John has only just begun to receive his justice. And nobody even fucking _misses_ Connor anyway. Perhaps, in that far off realm of possibilities in the future, Finn could be his reward, his compensation; his prize.

Finn is radiant and _good_ and out of his league; yet he bathes with him anyway, not minding John’s scars when John finally willingly removes his shirt in the others presence. John still walks with a limp, and his hands are useless for anything except killing it seems, so Finn’s hands fall on John’s narrow hips when he helps him step into the river whenever John is unsteady.

It doesn’t go unnoticed, not for one single infinitesimal second, how much John owes Finn; how disgustingly good and kind and selfless Finn is, when John is a device for violence.

And he knows – God, does he know – that this whole arrangement is down to Finn’s desire to be the good guy; to be the hero. Which is why he helps clean John’s wounds with alcohol, and pretends not to notice when he cries at the pain. It is why he stood in front of Bellamy’s loaded gun and vouched for John’s life. Maybe John is just a project, to him, for his own gratification, because they sure as fuck weren’t close _before_. But Finn was kind to him _before_ as well. And John’s young and lonely and _ravening_ and maybe this time he can keep this one.

He slides forward, pushing himself closer to the edge of the rock, closer to Finn.

“Not –” he repeats, softly, shivering, “quite.” His fingers grip on the rock, on the knife still in his hand under the water, and then, startled by a pang of aching pain in his fingers, his grip relaxes. He mumbles Finns name.  

Finn leans closer, as reeds brush against John’s knees and feet under the water. “Yes, Murphy?” he says, like a fucking tease.

Finn’s radiant and good and out of his league; he shared his food rations with Raven Reyes, maybe this might be his charity, too.

“I’ve, I –“ Finn has freckles on his shoulders; John is lost. “ _Please_?”

He smells of soap and the earth and his lips are soft when he kisses him.

Finn’s hands are on John’s waist, holding him steady, as he gently presses against the other boy. John doesn’t know what to do. He’s never done this before, never thought of it, and kissing wasn’t what he expected but he wants to cling to Finn tightly now that it’s happening.

John doesn’t know what to do, but he knows he’s supposed to kiss Finn back. He leans in, pushing too hard, and too fast, and his lips press against Finn’s mouth almost painfully, and he’s fucked it up, but Finn’s laughing. He feels it more than anything else, as Finn’s lips curl against his in a grin before he pulls away.

John steals it from the older boy, grinning despite himself, and chuckling. Finn _looks_ at him, unblinking, before his hand curls around the back of John’s neck, finger intertwining with his wet hair, and he’s _giggling_ into John’s mouth.

Kissing is not, it turns out, all that remarkable, nor is John any good at it, but he is in love and selfish and covetous of the feeling of being loved in return; and the way Finn smiles after John whines when the older boy kisses his throat is all kinds of remarkable.

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after 1x10 but before 1x12. I don’t know when exactly. i never understood the timeline of series one. Humour me.


End file.
